Jeanne Eagels

Jeanne Eagels, born Eugenia Eagles on June 26, 1890, in Kansas City, Missouri, was an American actress whose career spanned stage and film from the early twentieth century until her death on October 3, 1929. The second of six children born to Edward Eagles, a carpenter of German and French Huguenot descent, and Julia Eagles, née Sullivan, of Irish descent, Eagels attended St. Joseph's Catholic School and Morris Public School before leaving school shortly after her First Communion to work as a cash girl in a department store. Actress Mary Shipp was her niece. Eagels would later falsely claim that her father was a Spanish architect and that she had been born in Boston.

Eagels began performing at a young age in Kansas City, working in small venues before leaving the city around the age of 15 to tour the midwestern United States with the Dubinsky Brothers' traveling theater company, initially as a dancer. She eventually took on leading roles in comedies and dramas for the Dubinskys, who later founded AMC Theatres. During this period she married Maurice Dubinsky, an actor who frequently played villains. The couple reportedly had a son who either died, prompting a nervous breakdown for Eagels, or was placed for adoption after the couple separated; they eventually divorced. Around 1911, Eagels relocated to New York City, where she worked in chorus lines and bleached her naturally brown hair. One of her acting coaches during this period was Beverley Sitgreaves.

Her Broadway career began in September 1912, when she appeared in the supporting cast of Mind the Paint Girl at the Lyceum Theatre, and she continued performing on Broadway through 1927. Among her early stage work, she played opposite George Arliss in three productions in 1916 and 1917. In 1918 she appeared in Daddies, a David Belasco production, though she left the show due to illness and subsequently traveled to Europe. Her Broadway credits also include The Wonderful Thing and In the Night Watch, among other productions.

The role that defined Eagels's career came in 1922, when she took the starring part in Rain, a play by John Colton and Clemence Randolph adapted from a short story by Somerset Maugham. As Sadie Thompson, a free-spirited and promiscuous woman who clashes with a fire-and-brimstone preacher on a South Pacific island, Eagels delivered what she considered her finest performance. She toured with Rain for two additional seasons and returned to Broadway for a farewell performance in 1926. That same year she was offered the role of Roxie Hart in Maurine Dallas Watkins's play Chicago but walked out during rehearsals. In 1927 she appeared in the comedy Her Cardboard Lover alongside Leslie Howard, touring for several months before returning to the cast in July 1927 following an absence caused by ptomaine poisoning.

Alongside her stage work, Eagels pursued a film career beginning in 1915 with her first motion picture appearance. She made three films for Thanhouser Film Corporation in 1916 and 1917, and in 1927 appeared opposite John Gilbert in the MGM film Man, Woman and Sin, directed by Monta Bell. In 1928, after failing to appear for a performance of Her Cardboard Lover in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Actors Equity banned her from the stage for eighteen months. The ban did not affect her film work, and she completed two sound films for Paramount Pictures — The Letter and Jealousy — both released in 1929.

In her personal life, Eagels married a second time in August 1925, wedding Edward Harris "Ted" Coy, a former Yale University football star who had become a stockbroker. The marriage produced no children, and the couple divorced in July 1928. During the height of her success, Eagels developed addictions to drugs and alcohol, and by the mid-1920s had begun using heroin. She sought treatment at several sanatoriums. In September 1929, she underwent eye surgery at St. Luke's Hospital in New York City while also suffering from breathing problems and neuritis. After a ten-day stay she returned to her Park Avenue apartment, but on October 3, 1929, she collapsed while visiting the Park Avenue Hospital and died of convulsions. The assistant chief medical examiner attributed her death to alcoholic psychosis, with toxicology reports also detecting heroin and chloral hydrate, a sedative she regularly used for sleep; her death was ultimately attributed to a chloral hydrate overdose. She was 39 years old.

Following funeral services in New York at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel, Eagels's body was returned to Kansas City on October 7, 1929, where she was buried in Calvary Cemetery. She was survived by her mother Julia Eagles and several siblings. Eagels was posthumously nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in The Letter at the 2nd Academy Awards in 1930, making her the first performer to receive an Academy nomination after death, though the nominations at that ceremony were unofficial, representing performers under consideration by a board of judges. In 1957, Columbia Pictures released a largely fictionalized film biography titled Jeanne Eagels, with Kim Novak portraying Eagels; Eagels's family sued Columbia over the depiction. A biography, Jeanne Eagels: A Life Revealed by Eric Woodard and Tara Banks, was published by Bearmanor Media in 2015.